Sally on the Rocks

A hundred years after Jane Austen’s novels were published, the plight of young women with no income remained the same. They were all in want of a husband. 1915.

After six years living in Paris, Sally Lunton faces a crisis of the heart (her love affair has gone smash); a crisis of the pocketbook (her meager living selling her small paintings has dried up); and a crisis of the soul, as she watches in anguish while the broken bodies of soldiers are carried from war-torn Belgium through the Parisian streets. Truly, Sally is on the rocks.

Then comes a lifeline: a letter from Miss Maggie Hopkins of Little Crampton, the English village where she grew up. It appears that the town’s bank manager, Mr. Alfred Bingley, is a most eligible bachelor with a steady income. Would Sally be interested?

Mr. Bingley, of course, is no prize with his blustering self-importance and dogged adherence to his deceased mother’s dictums about women. Spirited Sally is searching for a life of ease no matter the cost but the appearance of a soldier tortured by his experience at the Front forces her to question her motives.

And Miss Maggie’s invitation is not benign. The wily spinster revels in manipulating the lives of Little Cramptonians and she views Sally, with her possibly scandalous past, as a most interesting puppet.

Sally on the Rocks was written in 1915 and despite its relatively light-hearted story, the fear and uncertainty of war permeates its pages. Neither Sally nor her author could know that it would be three long years until peace in Europe was secured.